[a] He attended Kilmarnock Academy, where he contributed short stories to the school magazine, and graduated with an MA in French from the University of Glasgow in 1967.
During 1998 and 1999 he was the chief film critic of The Independent on Sunday, where in 1999 he also wrote a year-long column called "The Guillotine".
[10] The film Love and Death on Long Island (1997), directed by Richard Kwietniowski, was based on his 1990 novel of the same name.
Adair collaborated on the screenplays of several Raúl Ruiz films: The Territory (1981), Klimt (2006) and A Closed Book (2010).
Adair died from a brain haemorrhage on 8 December 2011, at age 66, thirteen months after suffering a stroke which blinded him.